BIG Focus Update – Building Codes, Innovative Funding Frameworks, and Community Housing Initiatives
Build It Green explains their focus on building codes, innovative funding frameworks and community housing for 2024 and beyond.
According to Build It Green, building codes are a major part of the legal environment around development. Fire and electrical codes, for example, have helped reduce the danger of fires for decades and saved the lives of thousands of people. Codes are an important tool for improving the way we build our homes and communities so that people and natural systems can thrive. At the same time, codes can be hard to interpret, difficult to implement with limited benefits or have unintended consequences. They can also make building more expensive and stifle innovation.
BIG imagines a better, more effective code system for California. A new-and-improved system would be transparent, flexible and easy to engage with. It would confirm baseline safety and performance, while also encouraging innovation. Over the course of this year, BIG will host monthly 60-90 minute facilitated sessions with a broad range of stakeholders focused on California’s building codes—how we can shift them to promote innovation, the leverage points and methods we can take advantage of to evolve the codes, and the key stakeholders we need to invite in to create the transformation we hope for.
Innovative Funding Frameworks
Last year, at the 2023 Gathering our members asked critical questions about California’s current housing and development funding ecosystem from a lens of regeneration and equity:
- How could innovative funding tools help meet California’s need for housing?
- How can we build wealth in marginalized communities?
- What real-world supply is created through various funding sources?